A protester shouts as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaks in conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. The annual Dreamforce conference runs through November 21. less

A protester shouts as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaks in conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. The annual ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaks during a conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, California. The annual Dreamforce conference runs through November 21. less

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaks during a conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, California. The annual Dreamforce ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Image 3 of 7

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (R) speaks during a conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff (L) at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, California. The annual Dreamforce conference runs through November 21. less

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (R) speaks during a conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff (L) at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, California. The annual ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Image 4 of 7

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaks during a conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, California. The annual Dreamforce conference runs through November 21. less

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaks during a conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, California. The annual Dreamforce ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Image 5 of 7

Image 6 of 7

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (R) speaks during a conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff (L) at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, California. The annual Dreamforce conference runs through November 21. less

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (R) speaks during a conversation with Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff (L) at the 2013 Dreamforce conference on November 19, 2013 in San Francisco, California. The annual ... more

In a talk briefly interrupted by Wal-Mart protesters, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told an audience at Dreamforce 2013 that she was optimistic about reinventing her pioneering Web company because its core services mimic what people do on mobile phones.

“When you look at products that Yahoo has always had to offer, they correlate to what people do on the phone,” Mayer told the large crowd at the Moscone Convention Center.

“It’s mail, maps, news, weather, stock quotes, games, share photos and the list goes on and on. What’s crazy is when you actually list all of those out, if you listen for a second, it might be what people do on their phones, or it might be Yahoo’s core offerings since the very beginning,” she said.

While a platform shift to mobile devices may have caught Yahoo and other companies off guard, Mayer said the company has shifted its focus and now has more than 400 million monthly average users coming from mobile devices.

“It is a little bit back to the future, but it’s taking those products that have always been very useful,” she said. “Perhaps they’re even more useful now on the phone,” Mayer said.

She said taking over wasn’t so much about “setting out a grand plan” as much as it was about “helping Yahoo realize the greatness that had always been there, the great ideas, the great products, and how do we envision that in a more modern way.”

Mayer, who left Google last year to take over and rejuvenate Yahoo’s fortunes, was one of the star keynote speakers this year at the annual Salesforce.com convention. She was interviewed on stage by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who was effusive in his praise of Mayer.

Mayer was about a half-hour late for the talk. Then about 10 minutes in, a small group of women got into the Moscone South hall and began chanting about Mayer’s involvement on Wal-Mart’s board of directors. Although echoes through the hall made the chants unintelligible to most of the crowd, the protesters carried a sign with a photo of Mayer and a thought bubble reading, “Why did I join Walmart’s board?”

Security ushered the protesters out in about a minute, although shouting from outside could still be heard even as Benioff joked that he would stage a protest by splitting up so that when the first group gets arrested, the other takes over.

Mayer used sports metaphors to describe how a good CEO runs a company.

Some CEOs convince themselves that they run everything, “but your job is to play defense,” Mayer said. “The team is on offense, they’re going to move the ball. Your job is to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to run in this direction,’ and clear a path, get the obstacles, the process, the bureaucracy, the nay-sayers out of the way and help people run as fast as they can.”

Continuing with the sports references, Mayer also invoked sayings of legendary Green Bay Packers Head Coach Vince Lombardi when she explained how she found time for work, family and community activities.

“One of his sayings was my priories are God, family and the Green Bay Packers, in that order,” she said. Now, she says her priorities are “God, family and Yahoo, except I’m not that religious, so it’s really family and Yahoo.”

Mayer did not talk about her announcement on Monday that Yahoo was encrypting all communications and other information flowing from the company’s data centers to protect its users’ online activities from the National Security Agency.